Ontario town councillor posted racial slur to Facebook then claimed his account was hacked and asked IT to wipe his hard-drive

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Don Cardy is a town councillor in Brant County, Ontario; on August 29, 2017, late at night, Cardy replied to a post in Arabic with a two-word post: "Fucking raghead."

In the ensuing debate, Cardy explained that he believed Canada and Ontario were being destroyed by their governments' willingness to accept migrants from the Middle East.

When a citizen lodged a complaint with the integrity commissioner, Cardy claimed that his account had been hacked in the middle of the night. Once the commissioner began her investigation, Cardy sent his computer to the town's IT department and asked them to wipe his hard-drive because his PC had started to "behave strangely and became unusable."

When Cardy was found to have made similar racist statements in 2016, he claimed those were also the work of a mysterious hacker.

The commissioner's report says that Cardy's destruction of the evidence frustrated her investigation and prevented her from resolving the facts of the case.

Shortly after Munro began her investigation, Cardy decided to then delete his Facebook account and have a member of the town IT staff wipe his hard drive. He said this was because his computer had started to “behave strangely and became unusable.” Munro said that this effectively prevented her from getting to the bottom of the case, but her lengthy report details all of the holes in his hacking story in hilariously deadpan language.

“Had the posts to Facebook all been in the middle of the night or the wee hours of the morning, it would be easier to believe that they were the work of a hacker,” Munro wrote. “Posting repeatedly during the day and evening using tools that are easy to detect is either the work of an unsophisticated hacker or a person who wanted to be found out.”

She also noted that Cardy claimed a hacker had made similar inappropriate comments that were identified on his account from 2016.

“It seems unusual that a hacker who was determined to interfere with Councillor Cardy’s Facebook account would post something in 2016 and then stand dormant for almost a year,” Munro pointed out.

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